e, that no acquired and resistant form yet protects it from the
potter's hand, against the weight of the turning-wheel, against the
friction of other morsels of clay kneaded alongside of it, against the
three pressures, constant and prolonged, which compose public education.

Evidently, there is here an enormous force, especially if the three
pressures, instead of opposing each other, as often happens, combine and
converge towards the production of a certain finished type of man; if,
from infancy to youth and from youth to adult age, the successive stages
of preparation are superposed in such a way as to stamp the adopted type
deeper and with more exactness; if all the influences and operations
that impress it, near or far, great or small, internal or external, form
together a coherent, defined, applicable and applied system. Let the
State undertake its fabrication and application, let it monopolize
public education, let it become its regulator, director and contractor,
let it set up and work its machine throughout the length and breadth of
the land, let it, through moral authority and legal constraint, force
the new generation to enter therein--it will find twenty years later
in these minors who have become major, the kind and number of ideas it
aimed to provide, the extent, limit and form of mind it approves of, and
the moral and social prejudice that suits its purposes.

II. Napoleon's Educational Instruments.

Napoleon's aim.--University monopoly.--Revival and multitude
of private schools.--Napoleon regards them unfavorably.--His
motives.--Private enterprises compete with public
enterprise.--Measures against them.--Previous authorization
necessary and optional suppression of them.--Taxes on free
education in favor of the university.--Decree of November,
1811.--Limitation of secondary teaching in private schools.
--How the university takes away their pupils.--Day-schools as
prescribed.--Number of boarders limited.--Measures for the
restriction or assimilation of ecclesiastical schools.
--Recruits forcibly obtained in prominent and ill-disposed
families.--Napoleon the sole educator in his empire.

Such is the aim of Napoleon:[6101]

"In the establishment of an educational corps," he says to
himself,[6102] "my principal aim is to secure the means for directing
political and moral opinions."

Still more precisely, he counts on the new institution to